Senator Daines credibility crisis

[DRAFTSTUD]

I have been trying to do what I can from Louisiana and I want you to go to Sec. 4002 and see how it reads as pertaining to your posts. John
http://www.cruz.senate.gov/files/documents/Bills/20150317_AERA.pdf

 

[BigHornRam]

Ben,

I've read your article in Western Hunter where you say we need to have an honest discussion about the management of our Federal Public lands. So let's have it. I'm not in favor of turning our Federal lands over to state to manage, period. But the course we are on is not sustainable.

Big waste and pork in the military budget no doubt. Government's good at that.

I've been in meetings where the FS was asking for money to spray weeds. Question was asked about how much that district had from their budget for weed spraying. 600K was the answer, but 300K was taken of the top for overhead costs, so only 300k available to them. What kind of business could survive if it spent 50 cents on the dollar for overhead?

The federal land managers have a lot of room for improvement. Let's start there.

 

[Randy11]

Daines is slowly reaching Rehberg-esque level of ineptitude for me.

At this point if he told me the Ocean was wet I think I'd want to go check for myself.

 

[pointingdogsrule]

BEN: I like the top graph. Mandatory spending makes up 65% of all the monies spent. The most amazing part of that fact.... 725 billion for Social Security and a whopping 856 billion for heath care. We spend more on health care then we do for peoples supplemented retirement expenses.

good luck to all
the dog

 

[jryoung]

Feel free to call Mr. Daines

WASHINGTON, D.C. OFFICE

1 Russell Senate Courtyard
Washington, DC 20510
Phone: 202-224-2651

OFFICES

Great Falls
113 3rd Street N
Great Falls, MT 59401
Phone: (406) 453-0148

Helena
30 West 14th Street
Suite 206
Helena, MT 59601
Phone: (406) 443-3189

Missoula
280 East Front Street
Suite 100
Missoula, MT 59802
Phone: (406) 549-8198

 

[Ben Lamb]

Ben,

I've read your article in Western Hunter where you say we need to have an honest discussion about the management of our Federal Public lands. So let's have it. I'm not in favor of turning our Federal lands over to state to manage, period. But the course we are on is not sustainable.

Big waste and pork in the military budget no doubt. Government's good at that.

I've been in meetings where the FS was asking for money to spray weeds. Question was asked about how much that district had from their budget for weed spraying. 600K was the answer, but 300K was taken of the top for overhead costs, so only 300k available to them. What kind of business could survive if it spent 50 cents on the dollar for overhead?

The federal land managers have a lot of room for improvement. Let's start there.

YOu bet. Take fire funding for example: Current congressional dictate is to have fire fighting funded internally, through borrowing other budgets.

Congress has cut budgets to public land agencies for decades, while increasing their duties. Instead, Congress votes to sell public land.

let's place the blame for poor management where it should be: On congresses' refusal to properly fund the agency.

There are several bills right now to affect fire-borrowing and place it in the discretionary budget, one of which is co-sponsored by Daines, yet he won't talk about it.

Another is the budgeting process, where Daines just voted to sell public land rather than fund the hundreds of millions of dollars of backlogged restoration projects.

 

[BuzzH]

A better place to start is to squash this idea of peddling/transferring public lands.

We can solve the other issues later.

 

[BigHornRam]

Ben,

I asked for honest discussion, and you go right for the we need to spend more money, big government card. So much for an honest discussion with you.

I never heard you squawk about "crisis of confidence" when this was going on with our previous Senator.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5Y9X5ggxzA

Max tried to crawl back to the center come reelection and Team Obama clipped his wings. Daines tries to go too far to the right, and Montanans will clip his wings. I can live with that.

 

[Ben Lamb]

Don't lose your balance, with all that spin.

What do you call a chronically underfunded public land management program? I call it a direct assault on our outdoor heritage with the end result being the sale or transfer of public land, but what do I know.

 

[Ben Lamb]

A better place to start is to squash this idea of peddling/transferring public lands.

We can solve the other issues later.

Amen, Buzz.

Many of us have been at the table looking for solutions for decades. The transfer/sale crowd now wants to only discuss their effort and not the collaboration that's occurred between state, private and federal partners. That's where the focus should be, not on transfer. But the big money wants the land, your land.

What are we going to do to stop it?

 

[.280 Remington]

I highly doubt if the average voter will remember this come election time.

 

[Ben Lamb]

I highly doubt if the average voter will remember this come election time.

We won't let them.

 

[Repair4]

Fellas,

I'm having a hard time finding out who voted which way on this bill, I'm pretty sure there is a portion of senate.gov that has the actual yeas and nays of each vote but I can't seem to find it, any help would be appreciated.

 

[PatrickK]

Don't lose your balance, with all that spin.

What do you call a chronically underfunded public land management program? I call it a direct assault on our outdoor heritage with the end result being the sale or transfer of public land, but what do I know.

I don't know that public land management is underfunded as much as the agencies responsible are inefficient. If the BLM/DOI/name your government agency had a budget of 10 bucks they would spend 8 of it on something stupid.

When the economy is booming the push for land transfer dies down. Hopefully, the economy will improve enough that this will go away sooner rather than later.

Patrick

 

[BuzzH]

The agencies are underfunded...no question, no debate.

Been involved with one for almost 30 years and the only thing that's changed is a higher work load, less staff, and more demands.

I've heard we need to more with less for the last 20 years...almost a running joke anymore.

There's a reason why correction workers are more happy at work than employees that work for the various land management agencies.

 

[RobG]

Fellas,

I'm having a hard time finding out who voted which way on this bill, I'm pretty sure there is a portion of senate.gov that has the actual yeas and nays of each vote but I can't seem to find it, any help would be appreciated.

Here you go. Nameless Range posted this on the thread started by jryoung
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/L...ote_cfm.cfm?congress=114&session=1&vote=00106

 

[jryoung]

BigHornRam, Can you pull up the FS budget and the BLM budget and pull it apart of all the wasteful spending? The big government card and government sucks card is an easy play, but it offers nothing to debate. Let's put some line items on the table, and discuss them.

As someone that is currently involved with forecasting, budgeting and calculating global tax expense for a $2.5B company in addition to having over 10 years of experience consulting with your search engine company, your chip makers, your email company, your networking company and a little fruit company in Cupertino, CA I can tell you it's impossible to budgeting decisions without facts, and I've watched CFOs grind on finance VPs for actual data, not fluff.

I'm not saying it's not there, but I want to know what it is. For example I'm currently in a ridiculous situation with the county here and they have been dragging their feet on me rebuilding my home, upgrading my septing and increasing my property value. All of which will provide the County with more tax dollars and a better environment with a cleaner septic, yet the fools dont seem to understand this and take it personally that I want to give them more paperwork for their approvals. I'm not immune to government BS, I'm just looking for line items we can discuss and work to improve upon.

I've had the privilege of being able to sit along side of some of the best financial minds this country and has and have learned many things. One of them is, you cannot manage EPS through OpEx. Those Companies that starved their OpEx budgets to try and gain a penny on EPS suffered long term, lost employee morale and ultimately a loss of talent. If we are doing the same with the FS and BLM, then I can only imagine a similar result, but with the only added upside being people knowing their job makes a difference.

Patrick - it could be easily argued that high oil prices and increased expansion of domestic drilling (up nearly 100% under Obama) increased the appetite for more and this push. Which is funny given the current price of oil. Perfect example of the boom and bust implications. If prices run this low for much longer it will be interesting to see what happens to the Balkan/Marcellous oil economies.

 

[smarandr]

One of them is, you cannot manage EPS through OpEx.

That's Earnings Per Share and Operating Expenses for those of you in Rio Linda

 

[kansasdad]

That's Earnings Per Share and Operating Expenses for those of you in Rio Linda

Bazinga!

 

[Gerald Martin]

That's Earnings Per Share and Operating Expenses for those of you in Rio Linda

I was hoping someone would enlighten us little folks, but I didn't want to ask. Thanks.